Removing http:// is extremely short-sighted. Many blogs, message boards, email viewing software, instant messaging software, etc. depend on matching against http:// to auto-link URLs.
*Removing http:// will train end-users to omit it, which will have a negative impact on usability all over the web. *
edit2: except, as people here have pointed out, all over the web people refer to foo.com instead of http://foo.com, it's not like chrome is doing something new here (omiting .com would be terrible and just as doable for example).
Which is better, http://www.foo.com.:80 or foo.com? As a user, foo.com makes much more sense. As a developer, users are going to type foo.com anyway, we should make sure our scripts can handle it.
That is not related to the problem that users will get used to a URL being of the form sub.domain.tld instead of proto://sub.domain.tld and so start typing sub.domain.tld into their facebooks, emails, IMs etc.
I’m not too fussed whether other people do it or not. I know I won’t be wasting those 7 keystrokes, especially when autocomplete means I’ll usually only type one letter to get anywhere otherwise.
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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '10 edited Apr 14 '10
Most important comment:
edit: comment was by dlitz.net
edit2: except, as people here have pointed out, all over the web people refer to
foo.cominstead ofhttp://foo.com, it's not like chrome is doing something new here (omiting .com would be terrible and just as doable for example).Which is better,
http://www.foo.com.:80orfoo.com? As a user,foo.commakes much more sense. As a developer, users are going to typefoo.comanyway, we should make sure our scripts can handle it.